The invention relates to an arrangement for determining the presence of a cartridge or a cartridge casing in a chamber of an automatic weapon, in particular a machine cannon.
Such machine cannons require, for a safe operation, a cartridge chamber interrogation, in order to prevent, in the case of an occupied cartridge chamber, the introduction of the next following cartridge.
In a machine cannon of the state of the art attempts to effectuate the cartridge interrogation by means of a manual visual control arrangement have been made. Such state of the art arrangements includes a radial bore in the original cartridge chamber, which extends through the weapon housing and the gun barrel, through which, with the aid of a rod, the cartridge chamber can be scanned.
This manual interrogation has the drawback that no control signal can be released by it, so that a timely switching off of the drive of the automatically operating weapon is not possible. On the other hand, the unavoidable erosions, which occur in the gun barrel of the state of the art by way of metallic particles which separate from the wall surfaces thereof and which are entrained by the exploding gases through the bore and lodge in the gap between the exterior wall of the gun barrel and the interior wall of the housing surrounding the gun barrel, prevent a smooth slidable mounting of the gun barrel in the housing and make the construction of such gun barrel more difficult.